Bush sends Rice to testify under oath

Bush, Cheney agree to speak privately to entire panel

CorbettB. Daly

WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) -- Facing intense pressure from Democrats and Republicans, President Bush reversed course and agreed Tuesday to let his top White House foreign policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice, testify publicly, under oath, before an independent commission investigating the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"I've ordered this level of cooperation because I consider it necessary to gaining a complete picture of the months and years that preceded the murder of our fellow citizens on September the 11th, 2001," Bush said in a four-minute appearance at the White House briefing room.

The move is an about-face for the White House after weeks of insisting Rice should not testify under oath before the commission because it would prevent future presidents from receiving candid advice from aides.

Bush also said he and Vice President Dick Cheney have agreed to jointly speak with the entire 10-member panel in private, rather than with just Chairman Tom Kean, Republican former governor of New Jersey, and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton, a Democrat and former congressman from Indiana, as previously planned.

Bush and Cheney are answering questions together, but not under oath, the top two commissioners said.

"It was the suggestion of the White House, and it seemed to us, in exchange for getting all 10 commissioners to be able to ask any questions they wanted to, to a member of the staff in as well, that we'd get the answers to the questions we needed to write the report," Hamilton said when asked why the two were not to take questions independently.

Those concessions from the White House were made as part of an agreement that the commission would not ask for testimony from other members of the White House staff and would agree to the notion that the Rice testimony would not be seen as setting a precedent for the future.

"We agree with the observation by the president's counsel that Dr. Rice's appearance before the commission is in response to the special circumstances presented by the events of Sept. 11 and the commission's unique mandate and should not be viewed as a precedent for future prospects for public testimony by White House officials," the commission said in a written statement.

Bush said the agreement between the White House and the commission upholds the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches.

"The commission and leaders of the United States Congress have given written assurances that the appearance of the national security adviser will not be used as precedent in the conduct of future inquiries," Bush said.

The move follows a week of intense scrutiny on the Bush administration's actions both before and after the attacks of three years ago.

Richard Clarke, a former White House counter-terrorism official who has served under every president since Ronald Reagan, has charged the administration did not take the threat of al-Qaida with the urgency it deserved and claimed the White House was intent on attacking Iraq immediately after the attacks.

Clarke's book, "Against All Enemies: Inside the White House's War on Terror -- What Really Happened," was released last week by Simon & Schuster's Free Press.

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Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said on the Senate floor Friday that Clarke is motivated by book sales and has told contradictory stories about the Bush administration in public testimony before the commission last week and behind closed doors before a congressional panel in 2002.

"Why did these allegations just appear last week for the first time, that is at about the same time he signed a multimillion-dollar contract," Frist added Tuesday on Capitol Hill, "just simply asking the question."

"I am delighted that the legal hurdles have now been addressed by the White House and that she [Rice] will have the opportunity to come forward with what I know will be a very powerful testimony and one that will set the record straight and really correct a lot of the misperceptions and statements that have been made to date," Frist said.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said Frist's blistering attack on Clarke last week was unfair and merely a publicity stunt to get "a perjury accusation on television and in the newspapers."

"The retaliation from those around the president has been fierce," Daschle said Tuesday, "he has even been accused, right here on the Senate floor, of perjury. Not one shred of proof was given, but that wasn't the point ... The point was to damage Mr. Clarke in any way possible."

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